I’m gonna have to go super old school on this, because I think gradually games have gotten progressively better about this as the art form advanced. The absolute worst for this that I know of for this has to be “Below The Root” which, despite this point of criticism was a mind-blowingly advanced game for its time, arguably the first real open world CRPG. I have no idea how anyone could’ve legitimately completed the game without either using a guide or playing it over and over for years to learn every possible route of progress. I think the confusing nature of the world was in fact simply because nothing of that scale had ever really been attempted before and there was absolutely no precedent for how to adequately guide players through it.
The world was, for its time, truly immense and sprawling with a multiple screen interiors for most buildings, a full cave system hidden underground, ladders and secret platforms aplenty. You could converse and trade with various NPCs in houses and wandering around on many of the screens. And when I say “screens” you have to keep in mind I’m talking about something this size. That is not a lot of context to work with for navigation.
It’s also full of secrets and hidden things, and like many games of the time you will need to find and use pretty much all of them, in pretty much a specific order, to actually complete the game. I can’t even describe how insane the sequence of events you need to do to actually complete the game is, this guy uses a guide and save states but I think it illustrates the general lack of clear guidance in almost all cases. Combine that with the fact that you “die” easily, your inventory is extremely limited capacity, and did I mention you’re on a time limit? Because the “goal” of the game is to rescue a guy and if you take too long, he dies and you can’t win anymore!
Such a great hangout game. As a kid with a vivid imagination and not enough English understanding to follow the plot I enjoyed my time just roaming around crafting spells and exploring samey dungeons a whole lot.
I got certainly the most lost I’ve ever been in a game in a Daggerfall dungeon, trying desperately to find the tiny wall tag that’s supposed to be the exit.
Q-OLED and kind of fell in love. Was ready to purchase one until, I was not. I found out it’s not a good match for productivity usage due to burn-in issue
This is an old view carrying over from old monitors. It wasn’t much of an issue before and definitely isn’t now. People have been trying to intentionally burn in OLED monitors to show how difficult it is. Like, leaving it on the same bright image on full brightness 24/7 and it takes months to generate any sort of noticeable burn-in.
Hard to recall them since I tend to drop them when I get stuck. If I look up a hint and find out it is something that never had any previous hints to figure out I also drop the game because nothing is more frustrating than guesswork.
Hello Kitty Island Adventure is similar to a very relaxed cross between Animal Crossing and Breath of the Wild. There are elements that depend on time passing in the real world such as socializing, holidays, and getting certain resources, and there are also a lot of very funny and cute storylines featuring all the Sanrio characters. You don’t need to be initiated into them to have a nice time (I sure wasn’t).
There’s no combat, but there are many other systems and areas to unlock that make the game feel deeper than it originally looks.
It also has multiplayer, if that’s something you’d use!
This sounds a little like the AC formula. In those games, I don’t really feel like I’m in the animus, so I think direct control over the hero should be thrown out, otherwise the bits where you’re not controlling the hero will feel out of place.
Inscryption is a very different game and I certainly felt more trapped, especially in the first third of the game. In that one, there’s an ever present reminder that you’re trapped, and there’s interesting stuff to so outside the main gameplay loop.
So you need to play as the princess and make interaction with things other than the hero fun, but not so fun that you don’t want to be rescued. I think you also need some kind of peril to give urgency as well. Some ideas:
elements from Prey - hide from your captor when helping your hero
puzzles and whatnot in your prison
periodic checkins - i.e. need to be in certain places at certain world times
Where the princess is in cahoots with the dragon. Maybe there are evil knights coming to marry her, and she needs to create a path for Prince Charming.
You have to do some work for the tower’s master and/or you need to gather informations for the knight. That could be stuff like cleaning their orbs so they can ponder them later, preparing/finding magical critters to be used in their potions, putting away his stupid sentient magical artifacts that keep trying to escape or do some shenanigans… Whatever. And try to gather information/find escape routes etc. But imo if there is some knight gameplay, it should be a minor part of the experience, otherwise you will indeed feel like you’re just playing the knight.
Edit: I think you could still have a fair share of knight gameplay if you make the princess gameplay some sort of walking sim where you wander around the tower, possibly under time constraints, and when it’s over, your have a knight section. You can figure out tons of way to make these gameplay segments interact too. For example there could be roadblocks to the knights progression that require the princess to do/find something. That could be mixed with Libra’s idea of having the princess cast spells and do other stuff during the knight’s segments, by having the player find the spells/artifacts required during the princess segments
TLoZ: Spirit Tracks had you control Link primarily but you used Zelda’s ghost to possess things, help you fight, and solve puzzles. It would be hard for a solo dev, but you could have a knight with an AI that proceeded based on what paths you unlock for it. So the princess would be some sort of astral projection I guess. But then, you wouldn’t really feel trapped. Maybe you need to hide your activity from the dragon or distract it for a stealth aspect or resource management. You would need to balance swapping back and forth between your body and helping the knight. Might be easier to settle on an in-universe justification after figuring out the core gameplay.
As I post whenever someone complains about them not being free in !freegames: you can sign up for a free trial of prime, claim the thirty or so games currently available, cancel, and keep all the games forever without having to give a penny to Amazon.
I seem to have injured some people, I get the stance on Amazon - no one likes the megacorps. But if you’re subscribed, I can’t see how ‘free’ GOG games are a bad thing to anyone.
As with all offers like this Amazon are hoping that it causes people who weren’t subscribed before to stat paying them regularly, and posts like this are kind of giving them free advertising.
It’s similar to recommending something like reward credit cards (where you can make money off them as long as you pay them off in full and never pay any interest), if you’re sensible enough with your money then you can get a freebie but the provider is looking to profit off you messing up or forgetting.
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Aktywne